Trump administration lining up climate change 'red team'

The Heartland Institute has been a long proponent of a Red Team “to critically examine what has become alarmist dogma rather than a sober evaluation of climate science for many years.”

The Trump administration is in the beginning stages of forming an adversarial “red team” to play devil’s advocate in a plan to debate the facts behind global warming and take on what skeptics call climate alarmism.

The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency are recruiting scientists by enlisting the help of the Heartland Institute, considered to be the lead think tank for challenging the majority of scientists on climate change.The institute has its own red team, which is the antithesis to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which it calls, unabashedly, the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change.

“The White House and the Environmental Protection Agency have reached out to the Heartland Institute to help identify scientists who could constitute a red team, and we’ve been happy to oblige,” Jim Lakely, the group’s communications director, told the Washington Examiner.

“This effort is long overdue,” he said. “The climate scientists who have dominated the deliberations and the products of the IPCC have gone almost wholly without challenge. That is a violation of the scientific method and the public’s trust.”

The Heartland Institute has been a long proponent of a red team “to critically examine what has become alarmist dogma rather than a sober evaluation of climate science for many years,” Lakely said. “In fact, Heartland has worked closely with a red team that has been examining the science for several years: the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, or NIPCC.”

What the Trump administration may pull together in creating its red team might look a little like what Heartland has created.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt “believes that we will be able to recruit the best in the fields which study climate and will organize a specific process in which these individuals … provide back-and-forth critique of specific new reports on climate science,” a senior administration official told the news service Climatewire late last month.

“We are, in fact, very excited about this initiative. Climate science, like other fields of science, is constantly changing. A new, fresh, and transparent evaluation is something everyone should support doing,” the official said.

The Heartland team continues to publish reports challenging IPCC and other climate scientists, which it began eight years ago. The group has produced four volumes of “Climate Change Reconsidered,” with a fifth coming out later this year, Lakely said.

“Hundreds of scientists have reviewed and helped produce those volumes, which have been published by the Heartland Institute,” Lakely said. The reports total more than 3,000 pages.

The irony behind the Trump administration taking up the approach is that it was suggested by a former Obama administration official, Steve Koonin, who suggested a red team-blue team approach to clear out the politics and address the science. Koonin teaches at New York University.

I do not think that they will be able to duck something of this nature. The support group of the last administration is gone. That means that the sceptics message can be publicly stated with the blessing of the government, even if the other side does not show up. No, they will be forced to muster their best talking heads to combat the threat of the public being exposed to the other side of the argument.

Traditionally red-teaming is different from debating, as you (Greg) say. The red-team term is being used now because it is more appealing (has positive connotations), I suspect, and also because a call for a “debate” would be met by a knee-jerk consensus response that the debate has in effect already occurred, within the sacred precincts of science.
Therefore, I think that it’s OK, or at least forgivable, to use “red team” in Koonin’s / Curry’s / Pruitt’s latitudinarian manner.

Greg
it’s being sold in the MSM as a debate. Even some nutty scientist (I wish I could find the article or even remember his name) condemned it as unscientific, as the concencus of 97% of scientists agreed there is no debate to be had.
I’m still trying to figure out if he’s having a laugh or he’s genuinely stupid.

I think a red team composed of climate scientists, even such as Christy and Curry, is a waste of time. Red team and blue team members all share the same assumptions. They just have different conclusions.
A red team composed instead of Validation and Verification engineers would critically examine climate models and determine:
1) are they calculating what they are claimed to be calculating?
2) do their projections have any predictive utility?
This approach would quickly show the bankruptcy of the entire consensus and the IPCC, and their claims about AGW.
Consensus climate scientists would be able to mount no riposte at all. There would be no debate. Climate modelers would be shown to be the scientifically inept crew they really are.
A red team of V&V engineers would share none of the assumptions that hamstrings thinking in climate science and, candidly, makes the entire field a tendentious farce of science.
A red team of Christy, Curry and Lindzen would mount a good debate, but no one convinced of AGW will change their mind. Such debates have already happened, and nothing changed.
Consensus climatology needs to be discredited by a team of outside experts, coming in from a left field that the climate scientists neither anticipate nor have the ability to contest.
Three V&V studies (red and blue V&V teams and a third but ‘identity-withheld’ black team) would blow the consensus out of the water.

Pat, while I agree with much of what you say, the simple truth is the majority of the public has never heard the most basic skepticism, the major benefits of CO2, the failure of the models, the failure of SL rise to accelerate, no “global” increase in hurricanes, tornadoes, extreme storms, etc… , therefore any debate that the public actually views would be very effective.

David A, the skeptical team will just be discredited in the media — especially the social media — as industry stooges and liars. They will be merely ignored by the consensus and the IPCC. Nothing will change.
Except, of course, for the path taken by the US under President Trump. But his path takes its guide in economics (all pain, no gain), not science.

Pat is onto something IMHO.
Look at WUWT and other sites like Curry, Nova and Goddard. Literally hundreds of Red Team type debates, articles etc etc and yet true believers like Mosher haven’t budged an inch on their belief.

The blue team has finished their work. It’s called the published science.
In most of the red team operations I worked on we were given documents that laid out
the best blue had to offer.
The job: tear it to pieces.
Then blue went through and picked the best red had to offer and modified the status quo as appropriate.
Its not a debate or a face to face challenge.
That would be a murder board.

So the only difference from the present situation would be that the blue team would have to stop calling people names, ducking all questions and constantly appealing to a completely contrived and ridiculous 97% consensus. The blue team would actually have to behave like scientists. That would be a welcome change, but I won’t believe it until I see it.
The blue team is already quite aware of how precarious their position is, and how vulnerable their tenuous arguments are. If they engage in this process honorably, it will be a huge embarrassment to the scientific community and an even bigger blow to the political, environmental and scientific activists that have been spearheading this from the beginning. They will not participate willingly, and if forced to, they will not do so honorably. It will be more of a PR battle than an attempt to clarify and strengthen the science.
This is what I predict will be the blue team strategy (along with their supporters and advocates):
1. Resist – This has already started. There is no need for this exercise, as we have the illusion of a 97% consensus (on something that we have cleverly never really defined.)
2. Delay – We will get into a huge debate on just how this will be set up. It could take years, and Trump may be out of office before we actually have to do anything.
3. Control – If we have to do this…we will insist that the red team must adhere to the following 7,335 rules and requirements. This must happen in order to insure quality science. If any one of these are broken, then the red team is no longer valid.
4. Object – We will object to anything and everything along the way, so that the whole process will get bogged down.
5. Confuse – We will claim a language barrier and accuse the red team of not really understanding the issues. We will argue over semantics whenever possible.
6. Obstruct – We will use all of our resources to limit or prevent the red team from having any public exposure.
7. Demonize – We will use all of our resources to dig up dirt on a red team members. Dirt will be front page news.
8. Name calling and appeals to authority (consensus) – If all else fails, we will do what we have always down so effectively.
9. Claim victory – In he end, we may be forced to change our rhetoric, but we will claim that is what we were saying all along. We will maintain that the threat of disaster is still viable and all move to California, where they still no how to pay handsomely for really bad advice.

Steven Mosher: “The blue team has finished their work.”
They’re finished? Can you provide any law, axiom, postulate, formula, or any tool of reason that quantifies the ‘greenhouse gas’ property of CO2?

To S. Masher:
The Blue Team has published junk science.
Pitiful junk science, not even clever junk science.
Assisted by left wing mindless parrots like you.
– CO2 is evil, CO2 is evil — squawk squawk
— Going to kill everyone, going to kill everyone — squawk squawk
— 105% of scientists say so — squawk squawk
—- Scientists are never wrong — squawk squawk
CO2 controls the climate?
No evidence of that in 4.5 billion years,
except, maybe, for a rapid rise of both CO2 and average temperature
between the early 1990s and early 2000s
(up about +0.5 degrees C.)
— a rapid rise of temperature,
unlike what would be expected from gradual greenhouse warming,
with no effect on Antarctica,
also unlike what would be expected from greenhouse warming.
STRIKE 1
.
.
Runaway global warming?
No evidence of that in prior 4.5 billion years,
with CO2 levels higher than today almost the entire time.
STRIKE 2
.
.
Global Circulation Models predict the future?
30 years of grossly inaccurate predictions.
STRIKE 3
.
.
It is a red versus blue debate, whether a real oral debate, or just two written reports,
between junk science, where the future can be predicted with great accuracy (heh heh),
and real science where there are many “we don’t knows” and no need to get
attention by making scary (wrong) predictions of the future climate.
Most important is knowing climate parrots like you are on the junk science side.

Steve Mosher is right. The only thing I take issue with is that he gives the blue team the role of referee and gives them the last word. By “published science” I assume he means the science representing the skeptical view. But it should not be a debate or it will quickly degenerate into another climate wars exercise.
The problems I see are sponsorship and red team/blue team membership. If you let the Trump administration set the rules and red team membership then politics will rule from the beginning. If the red team is to have credibility, its leader will have to be a scientist or keen observer with a reputation for fairness. Others have suggested Koonin or Curry but they should be tested for credibility with blue team members. They are both “lukewarmers” in the broad sense and maybe wouldn’t stir up too much angst from the other side.
This would be difficult. If there isn’t some mutual good will from the beginning then it would be a waste of time. Thus Trump administration officials should stay out of it, other than helping find the right person to lead the red team and providing some funding – perhaps matched by some foundation money or funds from somebody like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.
A good start would be to stop regarding guys like Steve Mosher as the enemy, which would require that he resist acting like the enemy. Mosher can be helpful with his experience in red team exercises, and he’s been on both sides of the issue. And I find him to be a skeptic in the traditional sense when he doesn’t feel like he is forced to represent the blue team position. This whole thing should be an exercise in skepticism, right?
If we can get both sides to quantify the uncertainies inherent in the science then that would be a major victory. I’m not looking for a “consensus” so much as a clear statement from both teams. Then this judgment feeds directly into politics – or, more properly, the policy debate. Maybe the red/blue team exercise will mute the extremes on both sides.

Okay so which version of the published science does blue team accept as correct since they are “done?” That’s such an ignorant anti-scientific statement and a clear indication that you don’t have a clue how this science thing actually works.

Mosh, looks like you worked on a lot of “imaginary” teams…your resume is actually a historic tale of job failures and exaggerations. You actually come here thinking you’re going to “educate” people…Really.
Your contributions to anything even remotely scientific is zero. Your BEST delusions have left you an angry, snarky, lost soul. Your one day of fame was over 5 years ago, get over it. No one is really interested in your data masturbations or your “broken record” snark.
You have to reinvent yourself to a new moshpup….something people might once again listen to.

Mosh
It is a little disingenuous to suggest that ‘Blue Team’ material is ‘published science’ implying that ‘Red Team’ material is not.
Red Team material is usually the same published papers as Blue Team material. The difference I see as an observer is the extreme bias applied by Blue Team to interpreting that published material in favour of a “Chicken Little” conclusion that, metaphorically, the sky is falling.
Just because something gets published does not make it ‘science’. That is akin to creating some holy book of ‘science’ that is the indubitable ‘truth’ while beating off critics. That is ‘scientism’ not science.
CAGW is a concatenation of beliefs about scientific observations. It is a derived set of conclusions. It is not ‘science’. Science doesn’t have an opinion and science doesn’t have beliefs and science doesn’t have conclusions save things derived from first principles. It is comprised of facts as they are observable and to the extent they can be assessed as representing reality. Interpretation follows and leads to ‘what scientists believe’. What scientists believe is not ‘science’, it is their beliefs.
The RC8.5 prognostications about temperature and sea level made on behalf of the IPCC do not represent reality in any statistically significant form and deserve to be ignored, not rewarded. A great deal of what appears in skeptical books analysing the facts does appear to represent reality and the bottom line is, there is no cause for concern about human emissions of CO2 into the environment for the principal reason that it has no detectable effect, and will have none on any meaningful time scale. The atmosphere is extremely short of CO2, viewed historically, and tripling it would be helpful for everything, something we are currently incapable of achieving.

I think BEST was pretty much a red team exercise. Look what Anthony said about it before the results were published. Set up an independent group with nothing to prove and with the proper skills and credentials to perform the study.
The idea behind genuine red team exercises is a desire to arrive at the best solution or the truth. If it is set up in an attempt to simply provide cover for declaring the blue team wrong it will be a pointless disaster.
As Anthony found, it is wrong to declare in advance what the red team will find.

“So the only difference from the present situation would be that the blue team would have to stop calling people names, ducking all questions and constantly appealing to a completely contrived and ridiculous 97% consensus. The blue team would actually have to behave like scientists. That would be a welcome change, but I won’t believe it until I see it.
1. The blue team has already deleivered it’s report. I see no name calling in the the FAR, SAR, TAR or 4th or 5th assessment.
2. On the interenet? ya, call people frauds and they will likely hit back. Just like Trump does.
Dont like it? unplug.
The real question is will the red team act like scientists? I bet not.
The blue team is already quite aware of how precarious their position is, and how vulnerable their tenuous arguments are. If they engage in this process honorably, it will be a huge embarrassment to the scientific community and an even bigger blow to the political, environmental and scientific activists that have been spearheading this from the beginning. They will not participate willingly, and if forced to, they will not do so honorably. It will be more of a PR battle than an attempt to clarify and strengthen the science.
1. Again, BLUE HAS ALREADY DONE ITS JOB. It’s red that cant get its shit together. read this
thread. No focus. no strategy. no leader. cluster fuckery
This is what I predict will be the blue team strategy (along with their supporters and advocates):
1. Resist – This has already started. There is no need for this exercise, as we have the illusion of a 97% consensus (on something that we have cleverly never really defined.)
Huh? Red team? Bring it on. The work they have to red team is published. Go to it!
2. Delay – We will get into a huge debate on just how this will be set up. It could take years, and Trump may be out of office before we actually have to do anything.
Pruitts in charge. If you cant get organized dont blame us.
3. Control – If we have to do this…we will insist that the red team must adhere to the following 7,335 rules and requirements. This must happen in order to insure quality science. If any one of these are broken, then the red team is no longer valid.
Red team can do whatever they like. Blue is finished. we published. Go attack it. That is what
red teams do. Red teams dont tell blue to re do their work. The work is done. published.
read the science. attack. have at it.
4. Object – We will object to anything and everything along the way, so that the whole process will get bogged down.
Nope. There’s one simple rule. Follow the practice that works. Blue has produced a status quo
account of the science. Now red gets a turn and funding. Attack the science.
Dont expect us to show up for dog and pony shows. we got work to do. its called science.
5. Confuse – We will claim a language barrier and accuse the red team of not really understanding the issues. We will argue over semantics whenever possible.
Err No. Blue lays down the definitions. Its in the science. Red typically argues semantics
6. Obstruct – We will use all of our resources to limit or prevent the red team from having any public exposure.
Thats fuuny. The last RED TEAM skeptics put together, refused to publish the reports those on blue
sent to them. Red never finished the job. They quit. about a dozen skeptics assembled to red
team the temperature record. QUIT. And they threw blue submissions in the trash
7. Demonize – We will use all of our resources to dig up dirt on a red team members. Dirt will be front page news.
Red team blue team is pure politics. dont like it? get lost
8. Name calling and appeals to authority (consensus) – If all else fails, we will do what we have always down so effectively.
Both sides give as good as they get. both sides have authrities they appeal to. Its the nature of
politicized science. red team blue team is just anotehr form of post normal science, this time
its the skeptics insisting on post normal science
9. Claim victory – In he end, we may be forced to change our rhetoric, but we will claim that is what we were saying all along. We will maintain that the threat of disaster is still viable and all move to California, where they still no how to pay handsomely for really bad advice.
Blue always wins. sorry

“Steven Mosher: “The blue team has finished their work.”
They’re finished? Can you provide any law, axiom, postulate, formula, or any tool of reason that quantifies the ‘greenhouse gas’ property of CO2?”
Read the science. I am not your librarian. I dont do windows or change skeptics diapers.
The theory is radiative transfer. Its actually engineering. That is, we know it so well we use it to build systems that defend the country. Thanks to the science done by the air force in the 1950s and more done by reagan and star wars, we understand how EM propagates. If you doubt the radiative properties of C02, then I will
tell you that Anthony watts, Roy Spencer, Christy, Lindzen, Curry, Koonin, happer, Dyson The whole list of folks suggested for the red team will make you sit the bench
im feeling generous. you get the grade school versionhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_radiative_transfer_codes
in industry we used these models to judge the efficacy of various countermeasures to IR threats and the effectivness of sensors.

‘Mosher: and this is one of te results from the wasted milions of taxpayers money by the blue team: bhttps://climateaudit.org/2017/07/11/pages2017-new-cherry-pie/”
That’s a data paper. There are no scientific conclusions in it. its data. a collection of data

You are right, Steven. The blue team has already done their science. My strategy does not depict the blue team doing any more science. It is what I predict the blue team and its supporters will do in reaction to anything the red team does or attempts to do. It is really not a prediction. It is more of a recap. I am only predicting persistence in blue team behavior. Admittedly, much of this behavior is by blue team supporters. Most of the scientists just apply for their grants and spin their conclusions into what the grant giver wants to hear. They stay out of the open discussion, letting their supporters do the name calling, make the proclamations of doom and appeals to consensus. The blue team usually doesn’t seem to have a problem with that, although I guess a few spoke up about the fear-mongering Times article a few weeks ago. But just a few.
The blue team science is weak. It is built on assumptions that appear less likely now than they did 30 years ago, and they were not very robust back then. There is no evidence of a strong climate sensitivity to CO2 levels in the historical record, nor is there any evidence of it now. The main line of reasoning from the IPCC is a logical fallacy; an argument from ignorance. The idea that the warming of the late 20th Century had to be man made, because “we don’t know what else could have done it”, is the same logical fallacy the Greeks and Romans used to support their believe in the gods! The blue team has no understanding of natural climate variability, which is understandable. They were never tasked to understand it. They were tasked to determine the human component. Of course, it is impossible to determine the human impact without knowing the scope of natural climate variability. So they made up a very limited version of natural climate change factors that falls way short of explaining the observed changes, both now and as far back as we can go.
The bottom line is that it falls on the shoulders of the blue team to make their case for a potential AGW crisis. The red team’s responsibility is to simply point out where they have failed to do so. The red team does not have to come up with a better model for climate change, only show where the blue team ‘model’ fails, which, so far, is in every aspect.
The blue team science is done, thanks to a great deal of financial support from governments around the world. The red team science is also done, but it is not collated. The red team has not enjoyed a fraction of the financial support as the blue team. Nor have they been given the many wonderful vacations to exotic locations for confabs, like the blue team. The red team is disorganized with no clear message, precisely because they have never been supported enough to all get together and hash it out. This may be their chance.
The question is not if the red team will find serious flaws in the blue team science. That is a given. It’s already been done, and much of it was available 30 years ago. They question is, will anyone on the blue team side pay any attention to them?
My guess is ‘no’, but I hope I am wrong.

“Steve Mosher is right. The only thing I take issue with is that he gives the blue team the role of referee and gives them the last word. By “published science” I assume he means the science representing the skeptical view. But it should not be a debate or it will quickly degenerate into another climate wars exercise.”
As a practical matter here is how it works.
1. You bring red teams in to check against Group think. At Northrop we had a Single guy who was hired
by the VP as a contrarian. An honest to god contrarian, did NOT believe in Stealth technology.
He was smart, accomplished and yes famous. You could google him. he would grab the the brightest
folks and red team what the blue team claimed was the right solution. Strangely enough I found
that it was no different than any philosophy class where you are trained to give the best arguments
for all sides.
2. the red team identifies weakness in the blue positions, unstated assumptions, etc etc. We would even
suggest tests.
3. Blue then deciding what criticisms were valid.
factually, the blue team will have the last word. They will have the last word because the blue team is actually capable of publishing results. Skeptics pretty much ask questions and are actually PROUD of the fact that they dont have to give a theory to replace the existing science.
Blue has the last word. Not perhaps politically, but I dont give a rats ass about politics.
Consider my own feild.
temperature records. there isnt a red argument I havent seen, There isnt a red argument that I havent already thought of 10 years ago or ben exposed to. That’s because all attacks on data records use the same tactics.
Its always the same no matter WHAT data you are looking at. Its always possible to attack observations
and the compilation of records. There isnt a single new Red argument about temperature records in the last 10 years. Crap i have them listed and numbered from years ago.
So will the red team come up with a new argument? Like what? there might be UHI? heard that one,
looked at for the past 10 years. nothing much to see. Now right before I joined BEST I had some results
which showed small UHI Biases. Those results never held up. I keep looking. Every year we get new datasets.. better land use surveys, better population data, 30 meter surface data, more stations, urban networks, more CRN data. I keep looking.. Blue speaks last. sorry.

If the blue teams work is finished, why do we keep hearing stories of substantial discoveries in climate science?
If the blue teams work is finished, then surely you can point to models that are making predictions that match reality?

Agreed, Steve. Having been on Red Teams, the process is not a debate. It isn’t even face-to-face. I’ve also been the beneficiary of Red Team work, having been on the Blue Team. If the CAGW Blue Team can accept the findings of the Red Team, then, maybe, we can all move forward and some folks can do some real science.
By the way, the comment above that “[c]limate science, like other fields of science, is constantly changing. A new, fresh, and transparent evaluation is something everyone should support doing …”. Stress that there have been new findings that need to be assessed and the overall understanding of the science will need to be updated. Allows people to change their minds (on both sides) based upon new knowledge.

Steven Mosher: The theory is radiative transfer.
That is an incomplete account of how heat is transferred from the Earth surface to the atmosphere; and hence an incomplete account of changes in the rate of energy transfer from Earth surface to atmosphere as the surface heats up.
The Romps et al account of how energy transfer from Earth surface to atmosphere changes with Earth surface temperature change only applies to a region of the US (the headline result was about change in lightning ground strike rate, but that was supported by an analysis of a non-radiative energy transport process.) Omitted are, among others, the Equatorial Pacific Ocean, the Amazon Basin, Central Africa, Southeast Asia. Omission of the non-radiative transfer processes leads to over-estimation of the surface warming that can result from an increase in DWLWIR of 4 W/m^2. More work is needed to quantify that overestimate.
Volunteer “red team” members have performed good service pointing out this and many other faults in the “blue team” analytical results.

Thomas Homer, “They’re finished? Can you provide any law, axiom, postulate, formula, or any tool of reason that quantifies the ‘greenhouse gas’ property of CO2?””
Steve Mosher: “Read the science. I am not your librarian. I dont do windows or change skeptics diapers.
The theory is radiative transfer.”
Wrong again, Steve. Radiative transfer alone is not enough to predict that atmospheric CO2 increased from 300 ppmv to 400 ppmv will cause atmospheric warming.

Formal debate is not necessary. Flood the newspapers with climate-realist perspectives, articles, and above all PROOF. No, you will not “win” against the emotionally-charged “blue” ideologues, but you WILL win over a ton of common-sense based Americans who’ve long suspected this issue is overstated. HERE IS THE OPPORTUNITY. BTW, there are plenty of papers in the country who’ll happily print it–not everyone is the NYT or WashPo.

What I have been so eagerly waiting for since Trump was elected President of The United States. As Churchill said “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

If the intention of both parties was to engage in honest debate, it would have happened already. This is a very dangerous path to take, and the winner, of this most likely highly televised event, will be to the person(s) quickest on their feet, not necessarily those with the most powerful arguments.
‘Do not argue with fools, as onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”

Greg,
whilst I agree with you, I think this will be more like a steam roller than a clinical evaluation.
Trump and Pruitt must be pretty confident of the outcome of this evaluation (as we all are) because if it goes tit’s up, Trump will be forced to back down on the Paris treaty.
And if he’s lining up the Heartland Institute, it seems it’s going to be a head to head.

A formal debate is usually organised so that two teams have equal times to make statements and respond to the other team. Red Team / Blue Team is not one of them. A public “debate” supposedly has two or more views being publicly aired and contested via the media. Since the media can refuse to publish some views, it may not be much of a debate. Red Team / Blue Team has a particular feature which gives it a much greater chance of success than a formal debate or a media “debate”:- Its only guaranteed component is the Red Team position, and there is no time limit for that. If the Blue team doesn’t turn up, the Red Team still get their say. Can the media simply refuse to publish anything? Yes, of course they can, but with government backing for the Red Team, the circumstances are sufficiently different that I doubt the media could succeed.
Bring it on!

“is NOT a debate”….
It’s going to end up being a debate……every media, scientist, magazine, movie, you name it
…..is going to frame it as a debate
And if we don’t get people up there with some balls….we’re going to lose it

There can be an oral debate too.
The purpose of two independent assessments is to encourage
one team to criticize the other teams’ findings
… and that should encourage ‘debate’.
It is the only opportunity for the red team minority
to ‘filibuster’ the blue team majority opinion.
It doesn’t matter if the ‘filibuster’ is an oral two-sided debate,
oral one side presentation, or two written reports criticizing
the other team’s conclusions / positions,
or all three.
The purpose is to encourage further debate in the future !

Like most trolls, Greg insists on the right to define words as he wants, and to change those definitions when needed.
Greg’s position is that only when two sides are in the same room with two podiums and take turns verbally defending and attacking their respective positions, can you call it a debate.

Mark W – Greg isn’t making up definitions. I’ve been on a number of debate teams, and there was one lectern, and two teams giving their statements alternatively, with time limits. That’s how it works. The Presidential “debates” are sort of like that, although the candidates rarely observe the time limits. Congressional and Parliamentarian debates are sort of like this.
I’ve also been on Red Teams, and Blue Teams. The process is not a debate.

The MSM factor will be a major factor and they will frame this as a debate , “Retired_Engineer_Jim July 26, 2017 at 9:45 am” you have no control over the MSM and they have allot to loose as the MSM has tied their identity to the climate-change-fear-narrative.
Retired_. . . you said “I’ve also been on Red Teams, and Blue Teams.” not like this topic, you haven’t

It will take a long time get a balanced dialogue on climate change, if it ever happens. Even Google is on the Blue team side:
“The company has a very strong view that we should make decisions in politics based on facts, what a shock, and the facts of climate change are not in question anymore,” Schmidt said. “Everyone understands that climate change is occurring, and the people who oppose it are really hurting our children and grandchildren and making the world a much worse place. And so we should not be aligned with such people. They’re just literally lying.” –Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt
Google violates Karl Poppers Rule # 1 «The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game» (Karl Popper – Logic of Scientific Discovery, p. 53).

I am totally fed up with these people who misstate the discussion. The fact of climate change is not what is under debate. It is the extent of man-made climate change, if any, that we are addressing. To conflate “climate change” and “man-made climate change” is, IMHO, nothing more than a deflection of truth.

“The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game”
I guess you wonder each day where the sun will rise.

@ seaice1. I like that reply, because that reply identifies one great mistake by Karl Popper: The idea that truth is something that can never be reached. That we can never know if something is true or not.
«I never assume that by force of ‘verified’ conclusions, theories can be established as ‘true’, or even as merely ‘probable’.» The logic of scientific discovery Page 10
As far as I have seen, he didn’t define truth properly, but he elaborated his view in section: 84 «Remarks Concerning the Use of the Concepts ‘True’»
I think that his mistake stems from his aversion to definitions, as expressed in the following:
“It is, I now think, the fact that most philosophers regard definitions as important, and that they have never taken my assurance seriously that I do regard them as unimportant. I neither believe that definitions can make the meaning of our words definite, nor do I think it worth bothering about whether or not we can define a term … for we do need undefined primitive terms in any case.” Ref.: ; Page 463; (Addendum, 1968)
The quote from Popper was not meant to indicated that I support Poppers view. Actually I clearly oppose Poppers view in my thesis: The principles of science (v7.5) (See section 3).
I actually wondered if it was wise to include in in my comment. However, as long as sound arguments are voiced against a statement, I think it is wrong to decide that a statement does not call for any further tests. In particular, I think it is horrendous that Google take that kind of stand against criticism of the climate alarmism propounded by United Nations climate panel IPCC.

seaice1 July 25, 2017 at 12:21 pm
While it is objectively “true” that earth goes around the sun while turning on its axis, predicting precisely where the sun should “rise” in a billion years remains a matter of scientific inquiry.

Apologies if this be too long. It’s from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on Popper and “truth” (strangely uses British spelling):
Popper was initially uneasy with the concept of truth, and in his earliest writings he avoided asserting that a theory which is corroborated is true—for clearly if every theory is an open-ended hypothesis, as he maintains, then ipso facto it has to be at least potentially false. For this reason Popper restricted himself to the contention that a theory which is falsified is false and is known to be such, and that a theory which replaces a falsified theory (because it has a higher empirical content than the latter, and explains what has falsified it) is a ‘better theory’ than its predecessor. However, he came to accept Tarski’s reformulation of the correspondence theory of truth, and in Conjectures and Refutations (1963) he integrated the concepts of truth and content to frame the metalogical concept of ‘truthlikeness’ or ‘verisimilitude’. A ‘good’ scientific theory, Popper thus argued, has a higher level of verisimilitude than its rivals, and he explicated this concept by reference to the logical consequences of theories. A theory’s content is the totality of its logical consequences, which can be divided into two classes: there is the ‘truth-content’ of a theory, which is the class of true propositions which may be derived from it, on the one hand, and the ‘falsity-content’ of a theory, on the other hand, which is the class of the theory’s false consequences (this latter class may of course be empty, and in the case of a theory which is true is necessarily empty).
Popper offered two methods of comparing theories in terms of verisimilitude, the qualitative and quantitative definitions. On the qualitative account, Popper asserted:
Assuming that the truth-content and the falsity-content of two theories t1t1 and t2t2 are comparable, we can say that t2t2 is more closely similar to the truth, or corresponds better to the facts, than t1t1, if and only if either:
(a) the truth-content but not the falsity-content of t2t2 exceeds that of t1t1, or
(b) the falsity-content of t1t1, but not its truth-content, exceeds that of t2t2. (Conjectures and Refutations, 233).
Here, verisimilitude is defined in terms of subclass relationships: t2t2 has a higher level of verisimilitude than t1t1 if and only if their truth- and falsity-contents are comparable through subclass relationships, and either (a) t2t2’s truth-content includes t1t1’s and t2t2’s falsity-content, if it exists, is included in, or is the same as, t1t1’s, oror (b) t2t2’s truth-content includes or is the same as t1t1’s and t2t2’s falsity-content, if it exists, is included in t1t1’s.
On the quantitative account, verisimilitude is defined by assigning quantities to contents, where the index of the content of a given theory is its logical improbability (given again that content and probability vary inversely). Formally, then, Popper defines the quantitative verisimilitude which a statement ‘a’ possesses by means of a formula:
Vs(a)=CtT(a)−CtF(a),
Vs(a)=CtT(a)−CtF(a),
where Vs(a)Vs(a) represents the verisimilitude of aa, CtT(a)CtT(a) is a measure of the truth-content of aa, and CtF(a)CtF(a) is a measure of its falsity-content.
The utilisation of either method of computing verisimilitude shows, Popper held, that even if a theory t2t2 with a higher content than a rival theory t1t1 is subsequently falsified, it can still legitimately be regarded as a better theory than t1t1, and ‘better’ is here now understood to mean t2t2 is closer to the truth than t1t1. Thus scientific progress involves, on this view, the abandonment of partially true, but falsified, theories, for theories with a higher level of verisimilitude, i.e., which approach more closely to the truth. In this way, verisimilitude allowed Popper to mitigate what many saw as the pessimism of an anti-inductivist philosophy of science which held that most, if not all scientific theories are false, and that a true theory, even if discovered, could not be known to be such. With the introduction of the new concept, Popper was able to represent this as an essentially optimistic position in terms of which we can legitimately be said to have reason to believe that science makes progress towards the truth through the falsification and corroboration of theories. Scientific progress, in other words, could now be represented as progress towards the truth, and experimental corroboration could be seen an indicator of verisimilitude.
However, in the 1970s a series of papers published by researchers such as Miller, Tichý, and Grünbaum in particular revealed fundamental defects in Popper’s formal definitions of verisimilitude. The significance of this work was that verisimilitude is largely important in Popper’s system because of its application to theories which are known to be false. In this connection, Popper had written:
Ultimately, the idea of verisimilitude is most important in cases where we know that we have to work with theories which are at best approximations—that is to say, theories of which we know that they cannot be true. (This is often the case in the social sciences). In these cases we can still speak of better or worse approximations to the truth (and we therefore do not need to interpret these cases in an instrumentalist sense). (Conjectures and Refutations, 235).
For these reasons, the deficiencies discovered by the critics in Popper’s formal definitions were seen by many as critical, precisely because the most significant of these related to the levels of verisimilitude of false theories. In 1974, Miller and Tichý, working independently of each other, demonstrated that the conditions specified by Popper in his accounts of both qualitative and quantitative verisimilitude for comparing the truth- and falsity-contents of theories can be satisfied only when the theories are true. In the crucially important case of false theories, however, Popper’s definitions are formally defective. For while Popper had believed that verisimilitude intersected positively with his account of corroboration, in the sense that he viewed an improbable theory which had withstood critical testing as one the truth-content of which is great relative to rival theories, while its falsity-content (if it exists) would be relatively low, Miller and Tichý proved, on the contrary, that in the case of a false theory t2t2 which has excess content over a rival theory false t1t1 both the truth-content and the falsity-content of t2t2 will exceed that of t1t1. With respect to theories which are false, therefore, Popper’s conditions for comparing levels of verisimilitude, whether in quantitative and qualitative terms, can never be met.
Commentators on Popper, with few exceptions, had initially attached little importance to his theory of verisimilitude. However, after the failure of Popper’s definitions in 1974, some critics came to see it as central to his philosophy of science, and consequentially held that the whole edifice of the latter had been subverted. For his part, Popper’s response was two-fold. In the first place, while acknowledging the deficiencies in his own formal account (“my main mistake was my failure to see at once that … if the content of a false statement aa exceeds that of a statement bb, then the truth-content of aa exceeds the truth-content of bb, and the same holds of their falsity-contents”, Objective Knowledge, 371), Popper argued that “I do think that we should not conclude from the failure of my attempts to solve the problem [of defining verisimilitude] that the problem cannot be solved” (Objective Knowledge, 372), a point of view which was to precipitate more than two decades of important technical research in this field. At another, more fundamental level, he moved the task of formally defining the concept from centre-stage in his philosophy of science, by protesting that he had never intended to imply “that degrees of verisimilitude … can ever be numerically determined, except in certain limiting cases” (Objective Knowledge, 59), and arguing instead that the chief value of the concept is heuristic and intuitive, in which the absence of an adequate formal definition is not an insuperable impediment to its utilisation in the actual appraisal of theories relativised to problems in which we have an interest. The thrust of the latter strategy seems to many to genuinely reflect the significance of the concept of verisimilitude in Popper’s system, but it has not satisfied all of his critics.

Gloateaus. Thanks that carefully selected piece. The following section sums it up nicely:
«At another, more fundamental level, he moved the task of formally defining the concept from centre-stage in his philosophy of science, by protesting that he had never intended to imply “that degrees of verisimilitude … can ever be numerically determined, except in certain limiting cases” (Objective Knowledge, 59), and arguing instead that the chief value of the concept is heuristic and intuitive, in which the absence of an adequate formal definition is not an insuperable impediment to its utilisation in the actual appraisal of theories relativised to problems in which we have an interest.»
It seems that Karl Popper messed up a bit.

Science aint a debate. Debate is theatre.
yes there are arguments in science, but its not a formal debate.
you dont prove science wrong by having a better argument.
You prove it wrong by doing better science. ya know data, and methods.
not rhetoric

Semantics. No one is calling this a ‘formal’ debate. There are arguments, as you say, which makes it a debate; not a formal debate, just a debate in the general sense. When the word ‘debate’ is used in reference to a red team/blue team exercise, it is not in the formal sense of the word. Science is not a debate, but there have always been and always will be many debates in and around science.
The arguments on the red team side are scientific, referring to things like natural climate variability, unknowns, a lack of warming consistent with the theory and so on. The arguments on the blue team side appear to be that the red team is stupid and should be ignored, that there is a 97% consensus that the blue team is right, and the ocean ate my homework.

S. Masher:
You wouldn’t know real science if it hit you in the face.
What you like are inaccurate “adjusted” infilled haphazardly measured
surface temperature data extrapolated 100 years into the future !
And you love jumping to conclusions about the effect of CO2,
in spite of no evidence, even in the excessively “adjusted” surface data,
that anything unusual has happened to the climate
in our lifetimes … except for getting better
And you want us to believe this unbelievable nonsense?:
(a) Natural climate change for 4.5 billion years,
(b) 1940: Natural climate change “dies”,
(c) 1940: Man made aerosols take over as “the climate controller”,
(d) 1975: Man made aerosols “die”,
(e) 1975: Man made CO2 takes over as “the climate controller”,
(f) 2000: Man made CO2 “falls asleep”
(g) 2015 / 2016: Pacific Ocean “El Nino” takes over as “the climate controller”
.
.
.
And you want us to believe CO2 controls the climate,
when we had the following in the past 75 years?:
(a) Negative correlation of CO2 and temperature
from 1940 to 1975,
(b) Positive correlation of CO2 and temperature
from 1975 to 2000, and
(c) No correlation of CO2 and temperature
from 2000 to 2015.
.
.
.
And you want us to believe CO2 is dangerous?:
— So far the only scientific evidence about the effects of CO2
is from simple CO2 lab experiments
that may have no connection with real life.
… but if the lab experiments did apply to real life,
and CO2 levels did continue to rise 2 ppm per year,
it would take 200 years for CO2 to double
from 400 ppm (today) to 800 ppm,
causing the average temperature
to gradually increase by
a mere +1 degree C. over 200 years
— mainly warmer nights.
I’m scared — I’m heading for the hills
— oh my +1 degree warmer !!!
.
.
Masher, save the time of posting here,
and just post a picture
of yourself wearing a T-shirt that says:
“I’m a Climate Parrot —
Government bureaucrat
computer climate gamers
are never wrong — just ask them”
My climate blog for non-scientists
Don’t bother reading Masher,
common sense is way over your head !http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com

SM,
As always when making pronouncements about science out of complete ignorance, you are wrong.
There have been many productive debates in science, both formally, in the same place and at the same time, and via correspondence, articles or, indeed, theater.
How can anyone who imagines that he or she knows anything at all about science not have at least heard, for instance, of the debates between Galileo and Pope Urban VIII, Huxley and Bishop “Soapy Sam” Wilberforce (et al), Tesla and Edison (featuring an electrocuted elephant), Shapley and Curtis, Einstein and Bohr?
Please study science before presuming to comment upon what it is or isn’t.

The people have relied on a balanced representation by United Nations climate panel IPCC.
By recent observations, it seems that IPCC may have exaggerated the quantitative estimates of:
– The cause – the development of CO2 content in atmosphere expressed in the so-called Representative Concentration Pathways.
– The effect – the response of atmospheric temperature in response to CO2 expressed by the climate sensitivity.
– The consequences -the expected damages in response to increased temperatures
Further, it seems that IPCC has downplayed the positive effects of increased levels of CO2 as seen by the measured greening of the planet.
IPCC has also demonstrated a one-sided perspective on the precautionary principle, where the possible negative effects of CO2 seem to have been given more weight than possible negative effects of their policy.
I think the people deserve an independent scrutiny and verification of the perspectives presented by IPCC. And I think that should be provided by one or several bodies that are governed by principles that are superior to the potentially biasing consensus principles that govern the IPCC (Ref. article 10).

You left out the fourth and most important thing: the remedies.
— The remedies advocated are ones which, if the theory is correct, will not, when measured against it, lower CO2 emissions enough to reduce warming.
— And measures which are required in order to lower emissions and which, if the theory is correct, would in fact lower them enough to lower warming, are not advocated.
We have a combination of two very strange things here. One is that the measures advocated are ineffective, the other that there are effective measures out there which are not being advocated.
Ask yourself why. Under what circumstances could this happen? People are supposed to believe, claim to believe, that we are in a civilisation threatening crisis. And in response they advocate doing things which have no effect on it and refuse to consider doing things that would have an effect on it.
Surely at some point you have to ask yourself whether they really do believe in this supposed threat to civilisation? They sure as hell don’t act like they do.

Good point. If the IPCC is correct then we need to outlaw the burning of fossil fuels today, because of the warming still in the pipe. But Paris doesn’t even come close. So in reality it is all a show. No one truly believes ending fossil fuels is the solution, but the don’t know what else to do.

The remedies advocated are ones which, if the theory is correct, will not, when measured against it, lower CO2 emissions enough to reduce warming.
This is my biggest gripe with the Politicians. I can understand that they may not be able to understand the science, even to be hoodwinked by the advocates who claim to be scientists, but in reality are activists, but since every 14 year school child can readily see that the proposed policy responses do not reduce CO2 on global levels in any significant manner, I fail to understand how Politicians cannot understand the futility of their policies. All their policies do is to hike costs to the detriment of all.
Most political responses either achieve insignificant reduction in CO2, eg., because of the need to provide back up power produced by fossil fuels and which back up power is being run inefficiently in ramp up/ramp down mode, or it merely off-shores where CO2 emissions take place, eg., the closure of a steel furnace in the US or UK, only to be replaced by a steel furnace in India. Either way, on global scale, there is no significant reduction in CO2.
Presently, if we want to reduce CO2 emissions on a significant level, we have only 2 choices. First significantly cut back consumerism/consumption so that we all lead a 19th century life style, or second, to go nuclear. As matters presently stand, there are no other viable options.
Citizens in the West are against nuclear, and no one wishes to revert back to the 19th century life style, and that is why the Paris Accord gave China and India a free pass to enable them to emit every growing CO2 emissions. The developed West merely wished to continue with its programme of off-shoring CO2 emissions to China and India with heavy industry being closed in the West and transferred to the East. If China and India were not given this free pass, then consumerism in the West would have to be severely restricted, and politicians would soon feel the backlash as reality hit the fan.

Of course they bloody don’t. I’ve been saying that for years.
This gives them the advantage that, since the threat is essentially fictional, they can say ANYTHING AT ALL about it. (It’s like the way that Marvel comics have somehow or other turned Spiderman into a Latino guy. Why not? It’s not as if he really exists…)
So, global warming causes birth defects? It’s making all the fresh water disappear? Livestock have stopped thriving? Murder rates are going up?
Why not? It’s not as if it actually exists…

Horrible to contemplate a televised debate. Science is not to be judged on the TV sexiness of the participants.
In a Red team?Blue team approach, the Red team can be reactive or proactive. In the reactive mode, it examines propositions of the Blue team and ranks them as good, bad or indifferent, with reasons. In the proactive mode, in addition to doing the reactive thing, the Red team injects new or little-known propositions into the examination, for the Blue team to class as good, bad or indifferent.
My personal preference is for the proactive approach, as the agenda has been set for too long by the IPCC as a proxy Blue team.
You cannot do this adequately in a few TV shows. There will be more experimentation and calculation required to address many of the plausible discussion points. For example, the Red team might inquire as the the veracity and use of confidence limits and error envelopes, an exercise that would require a good deal of calculation to do it properly. Geoff.

Geof;The MSM factor will be a major factor and they will frame this as a debate , “Retired_Engineer_Jim July 26, 2017 at 9:45 am” you have no control over the MSM and they have allot to loose as the MSM has tied their identity to the climate-change-fear-narrative.

It’s all well and good but in the end you have to look at the past 50 years of the rise of Greenshirt activism and the “climate” theme in simple straightforward political culture terms. It’s social/political fraud that distorts any broad “science” to emerge regarding CO2 claims. By its nature an anti-empirical standard was created over generations of politicization.
A “Red team” that doesn’t enter the room acknowledging that simple and vast precondition regarding the evolution of the climate movement will simply become another event of social manipulation that favors CO2 advocates. Pretending it’s a serious science debate in the current form only aids establishment alarmists. In this imagined Red Team players like Curry/Lomborg become potential useful idiots to the green agenda.
Minute dissent along abstract climate data lines is functionally useless and a distortion of the climate political phenomenon. I doubt a serious “Red team” can be assembled and know the blue culture would never debate the actual history of Greenshirt history.
Skeptic social weakness to reality dominates as much as underlying alarmist control ambition.

It’s all well and good but in the end you have to look at the past 50 years of the rise of Greenshirt activism and the “climate” theme in simple straightforward political culture terms. It’s social/political fraud that distorts any broad “science” to emerge regarding CO2 claims. By its nature an anti-empirical standard was created over generations of politicization.
A “Red team” that doesn’t enter the room acknowledging that simple and vast precondition regarding the evolution of the climate movement will simply become another event of social manipulation that favors CO2 advocates. Pretending it’s a serious science debate in the current form only aids establishment alarmists. In this imagined Red Team players like Curry/Lomborg become potential useful idiots to the green agenda.
Minute dissent along abstract climate data lines is functionally useless and a distortion of the climate political phenomenon. I doubt a serious “Red team” can be assembled and know the blue culture would never debate the actual history of Greenshirt history.
Skeptic social weakness to reality dominates as much as underlying alarmist control ambition.

Interesting about the green shirts. It could be more correct than most people suspect.Stephen Hicks, a philosopher, has examined postmodernism and how it has taken over the academies.
Postmodernism deconstructs everything. (It’s really pseudo-profound bullshit raised to the nth power IMHO.) Basically it is impossible to have a reasoned discussion with them. As such you wouldn’t predict that a postmodernist would cleave to any particular political position.
Hicks’ salient question is, “How is it that postmodernists are, each and every one, Marxists?” I find his answer compelling.
They are Marxists first and foremost. The trouble is that Marxism has been thoroughly discredited. They can’t possibly win any reasoned debates. Thus they use postmodernism as a tool to avoid reasoned debate.
You would think sincere postmodernism would be the enemy of authoritarianism but these folks are extremely authoritarian.
Postmodernism is a tool and a fraud and it disguises their intent to drag down western civilization and, especially, capitalism. video (There are two videos and they’re each an hour long.)
The green shirts are just nasty useful idiots.

The root of the debate is in personalities, as is the Marxist/ Capitalist debate or the Authoritarian/ Libertarian debate. Perhaps more fundamentally, it is between those who believe that the end justifies the means and those who cannot accept that coercion is ever a way to deal with human issues.
Why else would people so commonly align as Green, Marxist and Authoritarian? Their personality cannot accept that others may be as “right” or even have a worldview that negates their priorities. It is a very tempting approach as it empowers the believer with a real option to create their ideal. Stalin and Hitler doubtless believed they were doing wonderful things and their enemies were wicked or foolish.
The Greens think they have to save the world at any cost whie the Marxists just want power without accountability- a match made in heaven!

We did the “right thing” in South Vietnam,
after 59,000 dies for nothing.
Governments monopolies do the right thing only be accident.
Private industry does the right thing ONLY if they provide people
with the goods and services they want, and profitability guides
the companies toward what people want the most … an if they
do the wrong thing they eventually cease to exist.

Stopped the spread of communism over a wider area. It was the right thing going into South Vietnam until politics took over.
When the US politicians stopped support of South Vietnam from the Chinese and Russian invasion they where over run and over a million where killed and missing over the next year.

Well that’s a start.
A far more extensive list of sceptics is to be found in the Global Warming Petition Project which has some 31,487 signatures in the USA alone.
Read it here:http://www.petitionproject.org/

bw,
Good Point.
“Climate scientist” at Wikipedia displays a list of some 235 names.
The list is obviously outdated and incomplete.
However below that list is the “List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming” you reference,( also incomplete and outdated) which on my count contains some 70 names.
The public has been fed the lie that there is only a small cabal of denialist scientists and that the ” debate is over; the science is settled.”
The Red Team/ Blue Team proposal may have the attraction of informing the public that 97% of climate scientists are not catastrophists.

Yeah bring it on , make it evidence based and make the scientists show their formulas etc to prove their claims , bring on the geologists and the Chemists etc get it all out there .
But look out for stalling tactics and fine individuals who do , no repeatable verifiable evidence is what will be found I think .

Griff is absolutely correct. The evidence is published and available for anyone who cares to look. The scientists have shown their formulas; the geologists and chemists have already got it all out there. It has been shown t be repeatable and it has been verified. What is totally lacking is an evidenced based opposition to this evidence.

My fear is that those organizing red team will be temped to simply stack the deck with scientists with as many letters after there names as possible. Ya Judith Curry is exceptionally credentialed, but she doesn’t have the same experience with the temperature record as, say, Tony Heller or E.M. Smith do.

It would be best to allow public comments for the red team position, and the red team then reviews them and publishes those they feel have the best merit. That beats 6 red team people sitting around hashing out a position document. Submissions could even be anonymous. That would give the widest possible range of ideas and experience.

That is why a format similar to the (now-defunct) Climate Dialogue site would be helpful. In it, persons not on either team could make comments in a forum “below the line”—i.e., separate from the main forum, but visible to the participants in the main forum, and quotable by them, and linkable-to from the main forum.
Actually, I think three should be two “lines,” with persons below the upper line being uncredentialed persons like Tony Heller or E.M. Smith (or credentialed scientists who don’t want to bear the main burden in the debate), and persons below the lower line being riffraff like us WUWTers (and SkSers).
There should be separate “dialogue-forums” for each topic, of which there are dozens, to keep threads manageable. New “dialogue-forums” should be split off whenever deemed desirable.
Why not involve the GWPF as well as Heartland?

Any involvement with those 2 groups would automatically signal to the climate science side that the study is invalid.
Both of those are political/fossil fuel advocacy groups and completely unable to deliver a science based result, as far as climate scientists are concerned.
If you want a result people take notice of across the board, leave out the special interest groups and those with a political or financial interest in disproving climate science.

Griff,
“If you want a result people take notice of across the board, leave out the special interest groups and those with a political or financial interest in disproving climate science.”
That same principle applied to both teams would likely disqualify most of the alarmist scientists as they are largely financially remunerated via the government. They have a vested interest in maintaining their grants and salaries and therefore present their own conflict of interests.
On the other hand, there are numerous unfunded, retired scientists who might make very good witnesses. They happen to be mostly sceptics, but they are independent. Indeed Judith Curry now falls into that category I believe.
I presume you would be happy with this compromise?

HotScot
Science is also paid for by University funding… though I guess that that may derive from govt too!
but in paying scientists govt is not doing so with a political objective or a financial return on inestment in mind?
Do note also that climate research in all countries of the world, however funded, comes to the same conclusions.

Any involvement with those 2 groups would automatically signal to the climate science side that the study is invalid.
Both of those are political/fossil fuel advocacy groups and completely unable to deliver a science based result, as far as climate scientists are concerned.
If you want a result people take notice of across the board, leave out the special interest groups and those with a political or financial interest in disproving climate science.

That’s known as “the genetic fallacy” (beloved by Stalinists in their day, BTW). Anyway, the role I suggested for Heartland and the GWPF was only that of nominating candidates for the red team, given their familiarity with skeptical players in the controversy. Having them make those nominations would sidestep the stumbling-block question of “Who’ll make the appointments?”

Will they have the guts/power/bravery to challenge the very basis of the whole thing – the radiative idea of the GHGE.
If radiation controls the temperature where we live, why is there weather?
If radiation controls the temperature where we live and because it moves at speed= c, why isn’t everywhere the same temperature all the time?
Will they get some consistency on what is meant by “Global Average Temperature”?
(Is it the temp of that stuff the soles of your feet are in contact with, is the temp of the place where your eyes & ears are, or somewhere else? 10 metres up? 100 metres up? Mid-troposphere? Tropopause? Where the fook are they actually talking about? Everybody knows of course but nobody says it. Why?)
Will they be brave enough to assert that (this is the biggie where they’ll be called crazy) we actually don’t live, work, sleep or actually inhabit The Surface Of The Earth.
We are actually living under the (radiative) surface in a similar way to how/where a mole does. It just so happens that the dirt above us is transparent to visible radiation.
Will they recognise The Actual Greenhouse on this planet – The Ocean.
It fits all the criteria. It absorbs and retains heat throughout its (top 100 metre) volume, it is warmer at the to[p than the bottom and only loses heat through its (upper) surface. The atmosphere fits none of these criteria.
Why do as many as possible of the human population like to live near the coastline, esp of large bodies of water if not because of the moderate variations/extremes of temperature (diurnal and annual) – unlike far inland where there are large variations from day/night and winter/summer
Will they apply simple and basic physics, as demonstrated on countless Utube videos of melting ice inside gas-filled glass cabinets (and Al Gore’s fail file) that adding CO2 and water vapour increase the thermal conductivity of a volume of gas and is hence a cooling mechanism.
Basically, that fixing a mirror (device, substance, material or ‘thing’ which reflects radiation) to your bedroom ceiling is not an effective way of keeping warm in bed at night.
If thermometers are twitching through something other than confirmation bias and cherry-picking, will they be brave enough to go look for the actual reason?

Clearly the biggest contribution of a red team would be to start out by defining terminology. What is a global mean temperature supposed to be and how is it specifically determined? Otherwise you have two groups arguing slang each with different meaning. Then the team has to ask what is the value of using these terms? What is the value of one number to define the atmosphere of the earth? I have in my hand my global mean rock that defines the composition of the earth. How useful is it to study this rock and how transferable is this information to the study of the earth, for example? The scope of the discussion is also useful. CO2 at 33 C and modest pressure goes supercritical where all its state properties changes. So what CO2 is supposed to be studied, exactly?
I would argue, for example, that science cannot even explain exactly what infrared radiation does when it interacts with materials. If you think this is incorrect, in terms of physics, explain exactly what the Christiansen Trough in infrared is. Oh right, no one knows. Why does infrared interacting with all materials produce this reflectance trough? Oh right, no one knows. So the presumption of basic things like what infrared does in the atmosphere is not a complete story. Perhaps the red team needs to identify these gaps in knowledge. For example, why are there no deep buoy systems monitoring the temp in the Costa Rican trench area where El Ninos propagate out from? No one thinks the volcanology of 1250C basalt meeting sea water there matters to ocean temperatures? Why is that? Think of the red team not as a rebuttal to certain climate views, but a roadmap of future climate research. Then life gets interesting. The goal should be to steer the climate science going forward more so than argue any position.

That is a problem. At least global warming made sense, CO2 is a radiative gas and this property means that it is possible that it could lead to warming, but it is not part of the physical properties of CO2 that it leads to climate change especially since climate is never in stasis, and temperature is but one of many variables (some independent some connected) which variables are in constant flux.n

This is where we have the problem. What is the red team to investigate? We could have them look at whether CO2 by increasing the thermal conductivity of the atmosphere results in cooling, as suggested above. How many want that to be the big question? Should we have them look at the proposition that because the temperature is not the same everywhere it disproves that radiation can influence temperature?
If we are to have a red team we must define what they are to look at. If it is this sort of stuff then good luck finding qualified members of the team.
The first and mist crucial point is defining the scope of the investigation. It would be really useful if there could be some agreement on what the red team should investigate. For example, it would be great if it could be agreed that the so-called greenhouse effect was real and results in about 1C direct warming for a doubling in CO2 concentration. It would be great to agree that the recent increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations are caused by burning of fossil fuels. Otherwise the red team will be spending its time and efforts on pointless digressions.
Reading WUWT it is impossible to get an idea of what it is sensible to challenge and what should be accepted.
Before any red team / team can be arranged it is essential to decide what should be challenged by the red team. Any suggestions welcome here.

How about investigating the eighteen year pause and how it falsifies the CO2 driven climate theory?
How about investigating why climate science ignores the Scientific Method?.
How about investigating tax payer funded climate scientist repeated continually conspire to dodge FOI requests?
How about thirty plus years of failed predictions?

“How about investigating the eighteen year pause and how it falsifies the CO2 driven climate theory?”
Been done – several papers out there about this.
“How about investigating why climate science ignores the Scientific Method?”
Well, have at it if you want. Been done by all the peer reviewers already. Anything failing the scientific method would not get published.
“How about investigating tax payer funded climate scientist repeated continually conspire to dodge FOI requests?”
Think this has been investigated, but it is not science.
“How about thirty plus years of failed predictions?”
Been done, is being done all the time. All models are flawed by definition, so perfection can never be attained. Thus all detailed predictions will fail. Predictions are actually pretty good. In the face of a less active sun we are warming, and current temperatures are in the middle if the predicted range. Pretty good overall.

Peta – Will they be brave enough to tell why these 2 statements must both be true.
All material above 0 Kelvin emit radiant energy
O2 and N2 are not greenhouse gas molecules — they can’t release the photon’s energy
Please see – http://vixra.org/pdf/1504.0165v2.pdf and see the experiments and reasoning behind where thier logic fails.
Reinterpreting and Augmenting John Tyndall’s 1859 Greenhouse Gas Experiment with Thermoelectric Theory and Raman Spectroscopy. Blair D. MacdonaldThis paper reveals, by elementary physics, the (deceptive) role thermopiles play in this paradox. It was found: for a special group substances – all sharing (at least one) electric dipole moment – i.e. CO2, and the other greenhouse gases – thermopiles – via the thermoelectric (Seebeck) effect – generate electricity from the radiated IR. Devices using the thermopile as a detector (e.g. IR spectrographs) discriminate, and have misinterpreted IR absorption for anomalies of electricity production – between the sample gases and a control heat source. N2 and O2 were found to have (as all substances) predicted vibrational modes (derived by the Schrodinger quantum equation) at 1556cm-1 and 2330cm-1 respectively – well within the IR range of the EM spectrum and are clearly observed – as expected – with Raman Spectroscopy – IR spectroscopy’s complement instrument. The non–‐greenhouse gases N2 and O2 are relegated to greenhouse gases, and Earth’s atmospheric thermoelectric spectrum was produced (formally IR spectrum), and was augmented with the Raman observations. It was concluded the said greenhouses gases are not special, but typical; and all substances have thermal absorption properties, as measured by their respective heat capacities.
8 Heat Capacity
Vibrational behaviour of molecules, as described above, determines the Specific Heat Capacity of a substance. Heat capacity is the true measure of heat absorption. All substances, including atmospheric gases, absorb and radiate infrared (IR) heat. When heat energy is applied to a substance, the ability for the substance to absorb the heat energy and raise the temperature of the substance is known as the specific heat capacity. The converse of emitting energy (cooling down) when released from the heat energy source is true. If – based purely on how the non-­‐GHG’s are currently defined – N2 and O2 are non‐GHGs because they do not absorb heat, then this must imply they both have no specific heat capacity; this is, of course, not true. N2 and O2 not only have vibrational behaviour – as I have shown (above) in this paper, expressed in their respective absorption bands in the infrared; but also have respective specific heat capacities – as shown (alone with other gases) in the following table.
So with a Specific Heat Capacity of N2…1.04 & O2…0.919 (kJ/(kgK) plus a x35,000 volume, does CO2 really matter?

Heat capacities again. The table you show in the link has Agon with 0.52 and helium with 5.19 KJ/Kg.K – a ratio of about 10.
This is interesting because atom for atom, the heat capacity is the same for each.
The molecular weight of He is about 4 and Ar is about 40 – again a ratio of 10. This is why the heat capacities per kg are different by a factor of 10. A kg of He contains 10 times as many atoms as a kg of Ar.
Avogadro’s law states that, “equal volumes of all gases, at the same temperature and pressure, have the same number of molecules” This works exactly only for ideal gases, but He and Ar are very close to ideal gases. Therefore a given volume of He contains exactly the same number of atoms as the same volume of argon. The heat capacity of helium by volume is therefore exactly the same as the heat capacity by volume of argon (at constant pressure).
When citing concentrations of gases in the air, volumes are normally used. This means that the concentrations are by number of molecules, not by weight. This is important because heat capacity by mass would be very misleading. For example, a concentration of 10% by volume helium would have a lower heat capacity than normal air. 10% of the molecules would be helium atoms. However, a concentration of 10% helium by mass would have a higher heat capacity. That is because there are many more atoms in 1kg of 10% helium than there are in 1kg of air. Thus it is important to specify of concentrations (and heat capacities) are by volume of by mass.
Monatomic gases have no vibrational modes. They are therefore IR and Raman inactive. Yet they still have a heat capacity. There is only one way the atoms can gain energy – by moving faster. That is translational energy.
However, the fact that monatomic gases have a heat capacity while they have NO vibrational modes should show that there is something wrong with the paper.
The paper says “If – based purely on how the non-GHG’s are currently defined – N2 and O2 are non-GHGs because they do not absorb heat, then this must imply they both have no specific
heat capacity; this is, of course, not true. N2 and O2 not only have vibrational behaviour– as I have shown (above) in this paper, expressed in their respective absorption bands in the infrared; but also have respective specific heat capacities – as shown (alone with other gases) in the following table.” (emphasis mine).
Monatomic gases have heat capacities due to translational energy. They have NO vibration modes, and cannot absorb IR radiation. There is clearly no requirement for gases to interact with IR in order for them to have heat capacities. The passage I have highlighted is wrong because not absorbing radiation does not imply no heat capacity.

I hope they start with the data, which are clearly inadequate to drive any meaningful policy decisions, other than “we need more and better data”. Arguing about the slopes of graphs and forcing constants gives the data more credibility than it merits. Once the data are discredited, then the rest of the arguments will be put into context ie they are pointless.

Also, nothing should be permitted to be claimed as “data” which has been “adjusted”; and, nothing should be admissible as “evidence” if it has not been openly available for analysis by other than its authors for at least 1 year. (Yes, that means 1 year after “disclosure”, Dr. Mann.)

A great many scientists know what is wrong with climate science. FEAR. Plain and simple, scientists are afraid to speak up. Until the climate of fear is ended climate science is operating much like astronomy 500+ years ago, where dissent was taken to be heresy.
Why should any scientist be judged on what they believe about climate? Do we judge scientists on the basis of what they believe about astronomy or math or physics or biology?

Leftism grows by silencing opposition,
based on the fear of ridicule, character attacks and
sometimes violence against property and / or people.
All that is necessary for the triumph of evil Leftism
is for good men to do nothing.
The ridicule, character attacks and fear of violence
is intended to make good men and women (real scientists) silent
Verbal and physical threats directed at people
who don’t believe what the leftists believe,
is a form of fascism, that can get violent at times.
Why should the leftist climate story be any different?
Leftism was the fastest growing “religion” in the 20th century

As this one simple question for anyone who believes in the CO2 theory of greenhouse gases.
If CO2 is such a formidable greehouse gas. Why does mars have an average surface temperature of -55 Degrees C with an atmosphere consisted of 95% CO2. Surley it should be boiling Hot if CO2 controlled the planets temperature ?
No one who just parrots the CO2 line without think has ever explained that without handwaving. Well its a bit further away from the sun…
Well if distance from the sun matters more than CO2 surely thats the case on earth ?

Why does mars have an average surface temperature of -55 Degrees C with an atmosphere consisted of 95% CO2.

It is not simply that the Martian atmosphere consists of 95% CO2, Mars on a numerical basis has an order of magnitude more CO2 than does Earth. In short whilst the Martian atmosphere is far smaller than that of planet Earth, 95% of a a small atmosphere is considerably more than 0.04% of a larger atmosphere.
In fact if you were to remove all the so called non GHGs from Earth’s atmosphere (eg, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Argon etc) and leave only the so called GHGs (eg. CO2, Methane, Water Vapour etc), both planets would have atmospheres of broadly similar mass, and yet no significant GHE has been measured on Mars. This suggests that the so called non GHGs in Earth’s atmosphere play a significant role in the temperature of planet Earth.

Thank you JustAnotherPoster, and Thank you Richard verney
Mars represents a fantastic real world opportunity to showcase how much we understand about the ‘greenhouse gas’ property of CO2. We should be able to measure this property of CO2 in near isolation within the Mars’ atmosphere. Yet we don’t.
Mars has a 200 F degree swing in temperature each Mars’ day. When, in the course of a Mars’ day, is any heat being trapped? How much heat is being trapped? How can so much heat escape?
Our inability to answer these simple questions, showcases how little we understand about any ‘greenhouse gas’ property.

“Can we please figure out exactly what causes climate change on earth
before we jump to speculating about Mars?”
Mars has a much more simplistic atmosphere than that of Earth, wouldn’t it be easier to apply what we know to the simpler example?

If we gave Mars an atmosphere of 1 bar of argon how would it change the temperature? It is effectively transparent to both incoming and outgoing radiation. One effect would be to cool the surface by conduction, but the mass of the atmosphere is insignificant compared to the mass of the planet. Convection would allow temperatures to be distributed. How do you think this would affect the surface temperature of Mars? I don’t see how it would make much difference but I would be interested in your response.

As I see it, the position is ever so simple. We just need a simple SANITY CHECK.
We know that the contiguous US, Iceland and Greenland have not warmed since their respective highs of the 1930s/1940. So all we need do is select say the 100 best/prime weather stations in the rest of Eurasia, by which I mean those with no station moves, rural locations with no nearby change in land use/encroachment of urbanisation, best maintenance, practices and procedures and the best records of the 1930s/1940s, and then we should retrofit those stations with the same type of LIG thermometers as used by the each station in question (calibrated in Fahrenheit or Centigrade as applicable at that station) and then observe temperatures using the same practice and procedures used by each station in question (eg., the same TOB as used in 1930/1940 at that station). We will then have 2017 to 2020 RAW data that we can compare directly to the 1930/1940 RAW data for that station without the need to carry out any adjustment whatsoever. We would not compile any Hemispherical data set, just compare each station with itself to see whether there is any significant warming at the station in question.
If most of these stations show no or little warming, then we can rule out cAGW since we will be able to conclude that there has been no significant warming in the Northern Hemisphere since the 1930s/1940s during the period in which about 95% of all manmade emissions have taken place.Science is all about experimentation, so let us conduct a sensible experiment which will resolve perhaps the most fundamental issue, namely has there been any significant warming since manmade CO2 emissions began to rise significantly?
We could test other parts of the theory eg., to what extent can water which is free to evaporate be warmed by DWLWIR? but I suspect that the SANITY CHECK that I suggest above would sufficiently resolve matters.

There has been a little warming since 1940.
Not slow steady greenhouse warming.
In fact not warming at all most of the time since 1940
(such as 1940 to 1975, and 2000 to 2015)
No warming of Antarctica.
No acceleration of sea level rise.
No tropical “hot spot”.
Nothing happened in the last half of the 20th century
that was different than the first half of the 20th century,
with little increase of man made CO2 in the first half of the century
— in fact both halves of the century had very similar warming periods.
Now you addd this up and the obvious conclusion is:
Runaway global warming from man made CO2
will eventually end all life on Earth.
Of course only an imbecile would believe that,
and the Grifter.

Whilst I agree with many of your points, I am far from convinced that there has been any warming since about 1940. Multidecadal variation for sure, but no overall warming.
We have no worthwhile data on the Southern Hemisphere. Hansen noted that fact in his 1981 paper, and Phil Jones went as far as saying it was largely made up (see the Climategate emails). Even today, the Southern hemisphere is sparsely sampled and this was even worse back in the 1930s/1940s.
Since we have no worthwhile data on the Southern Hemisphere, it follows that we cannot usefully compile a global data set. Even today, the tropical/equatorial regions are sparsely sampled, and the position was far worse in the 1930s/1940s.
We therefore only have worthwhile data on the Northern Hemisphere. That is why I suggest that we only look at the Northern Hemisphere. the added relevance is that presently the majority of people live in the Northern Hemisphere.
The problem is that we have corrupted data, and we need to carry out a SANITY CHECK to see how wide of the mark this data has now become due to the endless adjustments in its composition (station drop outs especially from high latitudes, and from rural areas and the switch to airport locations), and to homogenization for TOBS, station moves corrections for UHI etc.It is very worry how the data has changed from that accepted in the 1980s. Maybe the adjustments are good and have improved the record, but maybe they have done the reverse and that is why a SANITY CHECK is so urgently needed.
The accepted position in the mid 1970s/early 1980s was:
See NCAR 1974:https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Screen-Shot-2016-12-19-at-3.56.00-AM-1.gif
See NAS 1975:https://realclimatescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/0B8C71B1-21CB-709A-4E7E-A7FCDFF8CDCD.jpg
This temperature profile was even accepted by Hansen in his 1981 paper, viz:http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/NASA-NH-Temperatures-Hansen-81.jpg
Likewise Phil Jones in his 1981 paper also accepted that as at 1980 the Northern hemisphere was about 0.3 to 0.4 deg cooler than it was in 1940.Now it may well be that the Northern Hemisphere has warmed by about 0.3 to 0.5 degC since 1979 as per the satellite data and which case the Northern Hemisphere is today about the same temperature as that observed in 1940, or only about 0,1 degC warmer (which is well within measurement error bounds).
Why not just check it as I suggest.

Further to my above post, here is a plot showing the difference between the 1981 version of NH temperatures and the current version of NH temperatures:http://notrickszone.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/NASA-NH-Temperatures-1880-2016-trend_edited-1.jpg
The black line is the NH temperature profile as used by Hansen in his 1981 paper (Science Volume 213 August 1081) and the red line is the latest adjusted version of the NH temperature profile produced by GISS.
It will be noted that in the red line, the NH is today said to be about 0.9 degC warmer than the now (2017) version of the 1940s temperatures, but would be only about 0.1 degC warmer than the 1940 temperatures if the 1940 temperatures are that represented by the black line (which is the 1981 version of the 1940s temperatures).It is quite clear that the present warming is the product of adjusted data. If the adjustments are sound then that is acceptable, but it does beg the question what if the adjustments are not sound and the true position is that there has been no measurable warming since 1940″
I consider that it is no coincidence that the best sampled country and which has the best data records and quality control, the contiguous US, shows no warming from the highs of the 1930s/1940s. I am not saying that the contiguous US is a good proxy for the Northern hemisphere, but there is no good reason why it should be an outlier. It is a large area of land with a wide variety of climate zones, and the geography and topography is no way unusual in relation to the Northern hemisphere and it is not unduly influenced by oceans or a particular ocean current. At the very least, the experience of the contiguous US calls in to question the reliability of the NH wide temperature data set and whether the latest version of this is a product of mishandled/miscompiled data.

My main concern with this proposal is that it gives way too much credence to what is patently bogus. It makes it look as though there is actually something to debate. Until some evidence in support of alarmist claims is forthcoming there is nothing whatsoever to debate. Unvalidated model outputs and post hoc algorithmically mangled data sets do not sound evidence make.

I suspect the outcome may not be what is expected or desired by either side. We are likely to end up with 2 sides still absolutely attached to opposing views. What will happen then – some politician will make a decision and that decision will be reversed/modified when a different politician gets his/her hands on it.
In this case with 2 clearly very different scientific views it would be best if both the red team and the blue team could come up with some actual scientific experiments which could help resolve the issue. These should then be undertaken as quickly as possible and the results of the experiments incorporated in the next round of red/blue contest.
Experiments on the frequency response of CO2 IN BULK to EM radiation could be undertaken over 100m sized paths in the lab and you could also do a few km. horizontally in the real atmosphere with a modulated (chopped) IR source at one end.

” blue team could come up with some actual scientific experiments which could help resolve the issue. ”
Or one team could come up with thousands of peer reviewed scientific papers, and the other team could come up with myriad blog posts.
As Griff said, the blue team has made its case. The red team needs to decide what it wants to challenge and then set about investigating it. They did this once with BEST. Better pick a better point next time.

seaice1,
As you say, “the blue team has made its case.” It appears that you think it is a good and reasonable case, & that any objection is not correct or reasonable.
So, what is it?
Just what is the “blue team case”?
Give me a quick description/synopsis of the blue team premise and conclusion.

It is in the literature. What part do you want to know about? Decide on an aspect then look it up. Then challenge the findings. There are tens of thousands of papers. It cannot be summed up in a sentence. If you like I can pick a topic – lets say that greenhouse gases warm the atmosphere. That is one aspect of the “blue team” case. Is that OK for you?

I would rather have a double blind study in which statisticians are provided with various data sets, some real , some not, and asked to determine and report trends in the data along with their methods. We would need original data, data that has been worked up by the scientists of various time periods, and false data sets.

Along the same lines, but not quite the same as a red team, I’d like to see a comprehensive study of the data and adjustments, done by leading statistical experts. It may be that there’s no actual basis for concern.

” Participants were shown the GMST
data through 2010, but presented as “world agricultural
output” (see Fig. 3). The graph was accompanied by
the following statement that experts had to evaluate in
light of the plotted data: “A prominent Australian critic
of conventional economics, Mr. X., publicly stated in
2006, that ‘There IS a problem with the growth in
world agricultural output—it stopped in 1998.’ A few
months ago, Mr. X. reiterated that ‘…there’s no trend,
2010 is not significantly more productive in any way
than 1998.’ ” This statement is an exact translation,
into the economic terms of world agricultural output,
of a series of public statements about the putative pause
or stoppage of global warming (Carter 2006, 2011)….
It is clear that the experts disagreed with the invocation of a pause:
experts rejected the idea that the data confirm the
statement and instead find that the data contradict the
statement. The experts also found the statement to be
misleading and ill-informed. The experts were divided
on whether or not the statement is fraudulent, although
nearly ⅔ of them endorsed that possibility as well.”http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00106.1

Be realistic, boys.
The Government probably already has it’s conclusions drawn up in a hundred-page document, for publication once the Red and Blue teams have finished their deliberations. Officialdom would NEVER allow something like this to go ahead without knowing what the outcome was going to be.
So, what will the official line be – pro-alarmist or pro-sceptic? (Remember, this is Trump we’re talking about. A man who can change his mind in mid-sentence.)
My guess is that it will be a watered-down mix of both positions, designed to fit in with a political reality, rather than scientific truth.
No way is the global warming juggernaut going to be totally decommissioned.

Speaking as a foreigner, this US administration looks more open minded than the previous one, where debates about the issue weren´t promoted. (I do not go as far as to say that they weren´t allowed, although it looked like that. If the government only funds one side, practically it is like it is not allowing the other side to speak up)
After seeing how the mass media tried to bend the public opinion in issues like brexit or last US elections, I do not believe anything the MSM say about Trump. Some media seem to still be campaigning for Hillary.

Uncle Gust:
probably will be a Blue Red Summary
intended for the Riff Raff
written by politicians
several months later the “scientific” back up will follow.
however the back up will be online and the server will
overload so no one can download a PDF file, but you
will be allowed to read it online —
1,958 pages,
no table of contents,
no index,
no spaces between the lines
no paragraph breaks.

It would be much better if it was broken down into units of scientific issues for examination. One of the great benefits of this process would be to identify specific areas where the science is incomplete or obviously contradictory. That would provide a rationale for additional, targeted studies to be done in a rigorous manner. No more b.s. activist or inherently political papers! Michael Mann and the hockey team need not apply! They’ve got to stop giving out grant money like rubbers at a rock concert!

Should change the names.
Blue team for the skeptics, after all the science and data is now in and the skeptics have won.
Red team of CAGW will have to try and put up real arguments this time.
Anyone know who should be on the red team?

I would also recommend at least one statistician (perhaps WM Briggs) and one biologist (not sure exactly who but Susan Crockford might be a start, but she seems a little specialized in polar bears). Also would like to see someone working on alternative, more physics based, approaches such as Axel Kleidon or Valerio Lucarini. Steve Koonin is also a good candidate. If only Feynman were still alive.

The predominant reaction of the green blob will parallel that of the Democratic Party in the US to the voter fraud commission–the issue is so well settled confirming our position that any attempt to seek information or argue the issue is purely partisan posturing, so we will not cooperate in this exercise.
Given the past behavior of people like Michael Mann in not producing data in Freedom of Information Act cases or civil suit discovery, expecting the greens to ever act in good faith is naive.

Scientific debate on climate change? You may as well debate the existence of god with a religious fundamentalist compared to telling a regressive that the earth is actually doing ok despite the activities of the human aliens, unfortunately religious belief and the guilt of our own existence is hardwired into the human DNA and very hard to break even with reason, the only hope of separating people from this cult is for all of the people who see this folly for what it is to take the social risk and speak up. Hopefully a public debate will at least give people the courage to do this.

Tasks for the Red Team:
Focus on warmist falsehoods and fr@ud:
ECS wildly exaggerated by false positive feedbacks and resulting model over-predictions of warming;
Fabricated aerosol data to force-hindcast the cooling of ~1940-1975;
False claims of wilder weather that have not materialized
Intimidation by warmists of journals, institutions and academics – see the Climategate emails;
Adjustments to historic and current temperature data;
Follow the money – this is in dollar terms the most costly sc@m in history – trillions of dollars have been misappropriated and millions of lives have been wasted.
Feel free to add to this list of warmist fr@uds:
The MBH98 etc hokey stick, Hide the Decline, Mike’s Nature trick, etc.;
The doctored SPM reports of the IPCC;
Eliminating the MWP and LIA from the climate record;
The BEST temperature studies;
Grid-connected wind and solar power;
Forcing intermittent non-dispatchable “green power” into the grid ahead of much cheaper dispatchable power;
Destabilization of power grids by “green energy” schemes;
Corn ethanol and other subsidized food-for-fuels;
Carbon taxes, carbon trading, etc.;
Brainwashing of children and adults and the spreading of false fears;
Vilification of fossil fuels, which provide 86% of global primary energy;
Spreading fear of warmer weather when cool temperatures are by far the greatest killer of mankind;
Increasing energy costs driving up excess winter deaths;
Energy poverty, “Heat or Eat”.
… and the list goes on …

To MacRay
That’s too scientific.
I propose the Red Teal come to a debate with 100 large posters,
each with a printed prediction about the future climate made 10 to 40 years ago,
that we know now was a wrong prediction.
Instead of debating, a Red Team member would hold up a sign with a prediction
printed large, and the name of the predictor.
The Red Team member would read the prediction out loud,
wait a few seconds,
say “That didn’t happen”,
wait a few more seconds,
then burst out laughing,
just like Ed McMahon might do,
Johnny Carson’s former “laugh guy”.
Ridicule and character attacks work —
especially with so many laughable wrong climate predictions
made in the past — that clearly show humans
can’t predict the future climate.

None of these are frauds…
* Grid-connected wind and solar power;
* Forcing intermittent non-dispatchable “green power” into the grid ahead of much cheaper dispatchable power;
* Destabilization of power grids by “green energy” schemes;
Germany has a very reliable grid and 35% renewable electricity.
Increasing energy costs are not driving up excess winter deaths – at least not costs from renewables.
Excess winter deaths are lower in Germany than the UK, despite colder temps in Germany and more renewable energy used there.

No I most certainly do not agree.
The state full pension in the UK is now (or soon will under phasing) be about €170 per week. Many people do not qualify for the full state pension. Whilst I am not of pensionable age, I will only qualify for about 60 to 70% of that sum when I am of pensionable age. Last year it was only about £105 per week (ie., about €117 per week)
About 4 years ago the chairman or financial director of Scottish & Southern Energy which is one of the largest suppliers of energy in the UK explained that over 50% of the electrify bill is due to the green drive towards renewables. He was interviewed by BBC HardTalk so this interview may be available on BBC iplayer but in view of its age, I rather doubt it.
He explained that 25% of the bill covers infrastructure costs which is the connection of windfarms and STOR to the grid, 25% covers the “green deal” which is subsidies given to poorer people to help with insulation, boiler replacement and to help those in fuel poverty due to the high price of energy, and of the 50% that goes to supply costs this is far higher than it needs to be due to the high strike price paid for wind and solar and compensation paid to wind farms when the grid can’t take wind energy or when the wind farm is not producing energy, and carbon tax paid on coal and gas.
The upshot of this is that but for the drive towards renewables, the electricity bill would only be about 40% of what it currently is. It is all these incidentals towards the push towards renewables that explains why energy costs in the UK (and for that matter the rest of Europe) are so far higher than those in the US.
Now if you are relying on the state pension, as many in the UK do, when you have an income of just €170 per week it greatly matters whether your energy bill is about €1,225 or whether it is about €500. The difference may be only about €725 but when your sole income is only €170 this difference is immense. It is about 4 weeks worth of pension.
I have seen the numerous comments made by you in which you exhibit very little empathy for the plight of others. You do not live in their shoes and it appears that you have difficulty in understanding the difficulties they face, many of these difficulties are caused by the pursuit of so called green policies and the push for renewable energy.Could you afford to with go 4 weeks of your net salary (after deduction of tax), and if so, why do you not give that sum to charity so that you can experience the hardships that others have to endure because of the push towards green initiatives and renewables?
PS. Of course, there is nothing green about renewables, and the really stupid thing is that they do not even significantly reduce CO2. .

Thank you Richard.
The Excess Winter Mortality Rate in Britain is much higher than in Canada. Canada has half the population of the UK and our Excess Winter mortality typically ranges from 5000 to 10,000 per year, whereas in Britain Excess Winter Mortality ranges up to 50,000 per year.
Canada and Britain have similar health care systems. Britain has much higher energy costs and also has older housing with poorer insulation, both of which contribute significantly to its higher winter mortality.
Excess Winter Mortality especially targets the elderly and the poor – this is one of the most significant real achievements of the global warming gang, and raises “granny bashing” to a whole new level.
The warmists’ greatest achievements, however, were the misappropriation of trillions of dollars of scarce global resources based on the global warming scam, and the squandering of millions of lives due to needless energy poverty.
Regards, Allan
Reference:
Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather September 4, 2015
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRaehttps://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf

Addendum
**************************
My post from circa 2005 follows:
Here is a quotation from Wind Report 2005 by E.On Netz for the German wind power grid. As you can readily surmise, wind power is a huge problem for grid operators.
Within just two days, the entire generating capacity of German wind power disappeared, necessitating the startup of the equivalent of TWELVE 500 megawatt coal-fired power plants.
During the steepest drop on December 24, 2004, they lost the equivalent of one 500MW power plant every 30 minutes!
The truth is that wind power requires 100% backup from conventional power sources, a duplication of resources that makes wind power entirely uneconomic.
The feed-in capacity can change frequently within a few hours. This is shown in FIGURE 6, which reproduces the course of wind power feedin during the Christmas week from 20 to 26 December 2004.
“Whilst wind power feed-in at 9.15am on Christmas Eve reached its maximum for the year at 6,024MW, it fell to below 2,000MW within only 10 hours, a difference of over 4,000MW. This corresponds to the capacity of 8 x 500MW coal fired power station blocks. On Boxing Day, wind power feed-in in the E.ON grid fell to below 40MW.
Handling such significant differences in feed-in levels poses a major challenge to grid operators.”

2005 was 12 years ago and German wind power (and fossil fuel power) has changed greatly since then.
Germany has once has a ‘trip’ like in SA – in 2008.
They fixed that problem and it hasn’t happened since.
I would point out that since then Germany has successfully handled a massive ramp down and ramp up of renewable power – solar power, during the eclipse of 2015http://www.reuters.com/article/us-solar-eclipse-germany-idUSKBN0MG0S620150321
Its wind power prediction systems give data 24 hours in advance, by the way.

Griff
Your comments on the German grid are misleading and incorrect – the Substitution Capacity in Germany is now about 5% – that means to permanently retire 1 unit of conventional (reliable, dispatchable) power generation the Germans have to install 20 units of wind power.
Ja, 20 Einheiten! Was zum Teufel?

I don’t think the “Red Team” should attempt to counter the “science” at all. The question is not about science and never has been. The activists want to shut down civilization, not realizing what would happen to them if they succeeded.
If I was on the Red Team I would simply take a fast survey of the actual science in the IPCC report Not the Summary for Policy Makers that is cobbled together behind closed door by the politicians Take out the activist garbage, written by non-scientists. They will be left with model studies and a tiny bit of actual science.
Get together with Blue Team at that point and get them to agree that this is the science. Maybe Blue Team will want to include later studies that were not in the last IPCC report. Let them. Let them even include Karl et al and all the pause-busting garbage science. If it is peer-reviewed let them accept it, No point in arguing something on the merits. Let them have their best shot.
The one thing they should not concede is the statement “Since the start of the Industrial Revolution”. The studies that try to attribute modern warming to land use changes or coal burning in 18th century Britain. The IPCC clearly states that the modern warming trend accelerated after 1950 because of anthropogenic CO2. The CO2 levels before 1950 cannot be said to have caused significant warming. This is just the “science” of the IPCC reports, no more, no less.
Get all this agreed to as a starting basis for the exercise. Then show how the models have utterly and completely failed. Even with the Karlization and the adjustments and the model based satellite re-analysis the models run hot. This effectively counters 90% or the IPCC report and nearly 100% of later studies.
Then, when they are on the ropes and squealing, turn around and accept the models. At this point the arguments are all there for anyone with eyes to see, but the eyes blinded by prejudice will still be darkened with hatred. So let them continue in their blind faith while the real argument comes forth.
Now talk about mitigation. This is the real issue. You can say what you want about the science, but the real question is “what do we do about it?” It is easy to show using only the statements in the IPCC reports that the Paris Accords will not make the slightest dent in the predicted future disaster scenarios of the IPCC. The Paris Accords are a cash grab pure and simple. Without the US to support it, there is no point at all to the Paris Accords. I don’t see France and Germany stepping up to fund the Green Climate Fund. They haven’t got the bucks (neither does the US in reality, with its massive national debt).
Make it clear to all who can still listen that the UNFCCC and the IPCC were created to redistribute wealth, that the only possible reason to pursue them is to destroy western civilization, that the UN created these institutions with only political aims. If this were not true, they would embrace nuclear and hydro-electric projects.
These simple statements will explode heads in the media and will cause Al Gore to redouble his propaganda blitz. There is no hope of convincing the hard left on this issue. It is too ingrained into their DNA. In the 1800s it was Marx, in the 1900s the Soviets, today it is the Greens. Wealth redistribution is the goal and they will not quit. They don’t even know what they are fighting for, but they will fight to the end. Fortunately the hard left true believers are a small minority.
The true majority favor the real mitigation solution. Do Nothing. As fossil fuels get harder to extract, the market will swing to alternatives and the fossil fuel revolution will be replaced by a new one that we can’t even imagine today.
Meanwhile we can pay attention to true environmental problems that the so-called “greens” are ignoring. We can make sure that new coal plants in the developing world have the scrubbers we use to prevent the environmental disasters like today’s Beijing. We can improve land use, water use, plan for droughts and floods and sea level rise or fall instead of squeezing our eyes closed and pretending we can prevent these entirely natural issues by driving electric cars.

I disagree with your premise but some rational economic assessment would probably be in order once the science portion is completed. To be published later as a conclusion. It starts to look like an improved IPCC approach. Filter out the preconceptions and international politics.

Blue Team + Red Team = waste of green money
Best decision in favor of real science:
= Fire the Blue Team
Stop compiling average global temperature,
except for satellites
Stop making wild guess predictions of the future climate.
Sell the ‘super computers’, or scrap them
Compromise “lukewarmer” decision in favor of science
= Fire half the Blue Team,
replace them with a PERMANENT Red Team
Blue Team junk science versus Red Team real science?
Junk science will usually “win”.
Of course having a debate / opposition research / report
is some risk for the Blue Team,
but the Blue Team would have a lot of “advantages”:
Because:
Junk science can predict the future.
Junk science has all the answers
Junk science never says we don’t know
Junk science knows how to present their “case” to the media”
Junk science has three decades of government / public school propaganda behind them
Junk science knows how to cleverly ridicule and character attack (and harshly, if required)
The outcome of a Red Team – Blue Team “competition” is obvious:
Blue Team: Man made CO2-caused runaway warming will end life on Earth
Red Team: CO2 warming is not a big problem
Blue Team: No matter who is right, it’s still smart to reduce CO2 pollution,
Would you risk the lives of your children and grandchildren
by assuming the Red Team is right?
Red Team: What does this have to do with children and grandchildren?
Blue Team: Ladies and gentlemen, it’s obvious the Red Team
could not care less about your children and grandchildren !
Climate blog for non-scientists:http://www.elOnionBloggle.Blogspot.com

The imposition of government “science” is all, repeat all, about money. Real science will always choose the most elegant solution and I suggest that is within the definition of a promotion from the old and dreadful Vancouver Stock Exchange.
Perhaps the Red Team could use it.
“In the beginning, the promoter has the vision and the public has the money.
At the end, the promoter has the money and the public has the vision.”
The public is being loaded with trillions of dollars of vision.
Bob Hoye

Red team information already exists, and has existed for quite some time, and it has been known by a relatively few. The difference now is sheer exposure. Now it has an agent to promote it at the national level.
In effect, the red team might now have more posters to compete with the blue team’s posters.
No, it’s not a debate – it’s a political race, with each side allowed to campaign in full public view, striving to get votes. Will a new paradigm get elected from this political race?

Red team information already exists, and has existed for quite some time, and it has been known by a relatively few. The difference now is sheer exposure.

Not only that, but the blue team will be forced to defend its shaky dismissals of red team criticisms, which have convinced many journalists and opinion leaders. That’s what’s been lacking: enough “rounds” in the debate to back the blue team into a corner..

I’m interested in how this will be reported to the public. Ongoing? Through WH press releases? Online home site? Press organizations at the meetings assuming they have them instead of paper submittals only ? Conclusions?

I hope it’ll be handled by back-and-forth critiques online, like the Climate Dialogue site. Maybe there should not be a continual back-and-forth, but rather punctuated salvos every week or so. The topic is too vast and technical to be handled in an oral debate, although debates of that sort covering the high points should be regularly shown on public radio and TV.

The brilliance of blue red is that the status quo refuses to debate. With the stakes sky high, the blues in their trepidation are forced to participate or lose the whole trillions by default. I would like to see the exercise conducted with the utmost fairness, although, notwithstanding such fairness, there will be accusations of unfairness from the blues.
The issues to be ‘discussed’ should number only the key half dozen that govern the blue position. Let them choose what they believe are the key issues. I can see by many sceptic comments that skeptics on the loose would queer up the process with stuff that would hang a ‘jury’. We won’t benefit from saying CO2 is not a greenhouse gas, for example or that it cools (even though greening is an endothermic process).
They will include the Ir absorption of CO2, and many skeptics futilely get into minutae on this. Just as important, skeptics commonly don’t raise the issue that yes, in the lab this does happen, but in nature, other things counteract the warming effect whether by CO2 or any other cause (a la W. Eschenbach or R. Lintzen). The important thing is to blunt the alarm that is ‘supported’ with no one showing their work or hard quantitative numbers and their basis.
The precautionary principle will be resorted to. We should also resort to Bertrand Russell’s orbiting tea pot. A few choice climategate emails might be useful to show that ‘science’ needed a lot of Stephen Schneider’s encouragement of falsehoods to accomplish ‘what is right’.
We will not arrive at the correct science. If we succeed at showing the worst case to be some warming at loggerheads with significant natural variations and the obvious benefits of a bit of warming and CO2 I.

I see a fatal flaw in this approach, as evidenced by many posts on this topic. There are many references to the two “sides”, confirming that the posters consider the teams to be real adversaries.
In my very limited understanding of the technique, it is most effective when the teams are NOT adversaries but rather united toward the same goal.
By way of example, generals may have established a military operation, and then go back to the war college for some bright minds, and say “pick this plan apart.” When the RED team uncovers some flaws the general say “thank you” and go about fixing the plan. They all celebrate together when the action is successful. The same would go for rocket scientists designing a spacecraft.
Does anyone expect Michael Mann or Trenberth to thank the Red Team for exposing flaws? Who reconciles the two views?
I also agree that by naming the Heartland as a major resource for the RED team, they have poisoned the waters. The first things we will see is a reference to the Ted Kaczynski billboard, and the Koch funding (albeit only $25,000). Fred Singer will be demonized regarding 2nd hand tobacco smoke and Dr Christie (gasp) believes in GOD!

The “Blue Team ” will be no shows as they have repeatedly demonstrated over the years . Cowards not scientists . Science is about debate and the study of climate is in it’s infancy so why would anyone be afraid to talk about it ?
To stop the political nonsense and protect the professional integrity of all participants let them go off and leave the lobbyist’s , media and corporate welfare bums out of it .
Way too much polarization done mainly by jerks who couldn’t pass Grade 10 science .

By focusing on specific, outstanding controversial issues, just how unsettled “climate science” is will be made plain to anyone willing to look.
1) Has Earth warmed since AD 1700? If so, by how much? Has it warmed since 1940? If so, by how much?
2) How much of whatever warming has actually occurred can be attributed to human activity, if any?
3) How much warming would occur as a result of increasing CO2 from 280 ppm in c. 1850 to 560 ppm around the end of this century?
4) Are warming, if any, and more CO2, good or bad, beneficial or dangerous?
5) If dangerous, what should be done about it or them?

Only in your dreams is CACA about “physics”. You don’t know the first thing about either climatology or physics.
Biochemists are eminently qualified to pass judgement on the joke, junk “science” of CACA, many of the practitioners of which aren’t scientists at all, but math and computer programming grads.

SM,
However if you want to limit the teams to physicists, you lose. Who among the leading CACA spewers is actually a physicist?
I propose for the pro-science team theses esteemed physicists: Lindzen, Dyson, Happer and Giaever.
Whom do you propose for your side? All you have are the clowns Mann and Schmidt, neither a physicist. Hansen has a PhD in Physics, but his thesis is a joke.
You are so easy to make fun of. It’s like shooting dead fish in a small barrel.

SM,
Do you suppose that you’re more qualified, as an English major, to evaluate science than presidents of the AAAS?
So-called “climate science” is so bogus that even an undergrad in biology can see its fatal flaws, let alone the world’s most distinguished biologists, biochemists, molecular biologists, geneticists and other life science specialists.

Now that Heartland is suggesting a Red team..
folks will know which skeptics are considered to be tops in the feild.
and which are just hacks.
It will be fun to see which skeptics refuse to join, and who is left out.
Also, this will set in stone in the absolute best arguments the skeptics can muster.
Of course none of you will accept the results of the red team. Your religion is at stake

I would be happy to accept the CO2 theory, unfortunately it has been proven wrong by Mother Nature for thirty plus years running, That’s why the predictions\projections now stretch out to 2100.
I have accepted the results as being wrong and the theory falsified. How could any reasonable objective person not?
Sad that a noble profession like Science, which has enriched so many of our lives, has been corrupted by politics.

Sorry Reg, you are wrong.
Nothing in the theory precludes periods of diminished warming.
In its simplest version the theory maintains the following.
T = F(forcings)
The temperature of the earth is a function of MULTIPLE forcings: c02, methane, solar, aerosol , land change, volcanos, and YES natural internal forcing. Further. If c02 goes up and other forcings counteract
that, you will see slowing in warming, even cooling. BUT, if you held all things equal and just increased c02,
then the temperature would go up. To really test that theory you have to hold all other things equal. Given
that we live in the beaker and the beaker is huge its not possible to do that controlled experiment.
So no cookies will be issued to you. Further, the increase in temperature does not happen uniformly or
monotonically. Some of the excess heat will go into the ocean. Some of the exces heat will go into
melting ice. That’s why we dont look at short term surface measures only.
Now there is one way to do “controlled” “experiments” thats with a simulator. We do the same thing
with things like war simulation or engineering simulation. you put your best physical understanding into code
( And yes sometimes the theory cant be executed by code ) and you run the simulation.
This gives you an idea of what to expect. Nobody goes out and conducts a war to test war simulations.
They are largely unverified and unverifiable. but we use them to plan for the future. It’s the best tool
you have when the phenomena is too large to experiment with OR too dangerous to run experiments.
Even with an enginering simulation.. take aircraft survivability in war. An F18 for example is designed
to have 98% survivability to cannon fire from a 50 caliber bullet. How was that figured out?
Simple. Someone ran covart http://ajem.com/general/faq/ajem_faq.html
To back that up you “might” be able to run a few live fire tests. Shooting up 35Million aircraft in the desert is fun.
But you dont get many data points. enough for a sanity check
What about missiles hitting aircraft? That would be SHAZAM . Simulating how and if a missile can kill and aircraft is more of an art than a science. YET the defense of our country depends on this.
How good is this modelling? hmm, its a good guide, but not exacthttps://www.nap.edu/read/4971/chapter/7#91

I don’t understand why this is couched in terms of debate or even engage the blue team. The most direct approach is to take the IPCC report and tear it to shreds. Just assume it is the blue team bible; it is the basis of the politics.
A good start is whether the field follows the scientific method when the IPCC charter is in effect endorsing the precautionary principle and basically limits its investigation to man made effects. Question whether it has any hypothesis to test. If so what is it and so on with failed predictions including Hansen.

According to which adjusted data set? Yours? My predictions are actually perfect if I can make my own adjustments.
The adjustments to data correlate with CO2 increases with a 0.98 R2 according to Tony Heller. I’ll take his word for it over any official massaging. When you can explain specific physicality which required adjustments to records like Alice Springs, Rutherglen etc then I am all ears; otherwise please spare me.

“hansens published work holds up pretty good as a prediction.”
Against all the peer reviewed published data. That is how science works. If you want the red team to use blog posts instead then good luck.

I have proposed an alternative explanation for the increase in global average temperature observed over the last century and a half. It is a natural fluctuation arising from the integration of a large number of turbulent energetic processes. It is a centrally biased random walk. Proxy temperature data from ice cores show fluctuations with a statistically similar character. This simple stochastic model fully accounts for the observations and by Ockham’s Razor there is no need to look for further explanations. The same is true of global mean sea level. “Global Warming” is an hysterical over-reaction to the discovery that globally averaged quantities can vary randomly over time. There is nothing wrong with the data, the problem lies in the way it has been analysed by researchers who have little understanding of modern statistical methods. See https://goo.gl/gWuxSS and for a more popular account http://www.lavoisier.com.au/articles/climate-policy/science-and-policy/john-reid-2017-1.php

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